My first gift.

I received some coins for this project totaling: $1.18

Of these, two of the nickels (2007 and 2008) have the new design: the Forward-Facing Jefferson. I find it to be kind of creepy actually. He is looking directly at you.

Current Stake: $4.92

Another week complete

And also five more cents. Woo.

Current Stake: $3.74

Apparently pennies are lame.

Well, that's okay because I found another one. Yay.

Current Stake: $3.69

Not much school left.

Less than three weeks of school left.

Anyway... I found a dime today.

Current Stake: $3.68

It seems to be consistent.

I managed to find a penny and a quarter again today at school.

Current Stake: $3.58

More change.

Found a dime and three pennies in one of my classes today.
It's rather surprising that people constantly lose money...

Current Stake: $3.32

$3.18 + $0.01

While I was at the grocery store I found a 2001 penny in the Coinstar machine.

Current Stake: $3.19

I wasn't even at school that long...

I got back to school at 1:00 following the AP testing and I still managed to find $0.48 in the hallway. ... That change wasn't there yesterday. This is getting rather ridiculous ...

Current Stake: $3.18

STEP 9 COMPLETE

Wow, my school has lots of change around

Yep, more change. $0.60 worth found by the front door after school.

Current Stake: $2.70
STEP 8 COMPLETE

And by the way, silver is down forty cents to about $16.70, and I thought that metal prices didn't move all that much. Maybe I should actually do some research before making random guesses.

More change, one of each coin.

Well, at least one of each normal coin. I'm ignoring half-dollars and dollar coins today...

I found $0.41 in random places in my school today. The quarter was under the vending machine (this location is a big earner, apparently.), the nickel and dime were in one of my classes and the penny was in the gym. People at my school must think that anything less than a dollar is worthless, I guess.

Current stake: $2.10

A look at $1.69 in 24 coins.

How many different arrangements of coins can you make of $1.69 in 24 coins?
... I have no idea, but I can think of one way:
4 quarters
5 dimes
1 nickel
14 pennies

Year - Type - Mint Mark ( _ is blank) - Rating
My Blunt Rating System: (BRS!)
VF - Very Fine
F - Fine
G - Good
W - Worn
VW - Very Worn
BWFV - Barely Worth Face Value (yeah...)

The Four Quarters:
2000 - Maryland - D - VF
1998 - Washington - D - F
1994 - Washington - P - G
1990 - Washington - D - F

The Five Dimes:
2005 - Roosevelt - D - VF
1993 - Roosevelt - D - F
1992 - Roosevelt - P - G
1990 - Roosevelt - P - F
1975 - Roosevelt - D - VF

The One Nickel:
1975 - Jefferson - D - W

The Fourteen Pennies:
2008 - Lincoln Memorial - _ - VF
2005 - Lincoln Memorial - _ - W
2002 - Lincoln Memorial - D - W
2000 - Lincoln Memorial - D - G
1996 - Lincoln Memorial - _ - VW
1995 - Lincoln Memorial - _ - G
1994 - Lincoln Memorial - D - F
1989 - Lincoln Memorial - _ - W
1988 - Lincoln Memorial - D - G
1985 - Lincoln Memorial - _ - G
1982 - Lincoln Memorial (still not above 2.5% copper, just yet...) - _ - VW
1981 - Lincoln Memorial brass blend (95% copper, 5% zinc) - _ - G
1973 - Lincoln Memorial brass blend (95% copper, 5% zinc) - D - F
1966 - Lincoln Memorial brass blend (95% copper, 5% zinc) - _ - VW

And to tell if a penny is mostly copper rather than just copper plated (97.5% zinc core, 2.5% copper plating) you can just flick it into the air with your thumb. If it is mostly copper it rings where as the newer pennies do not. Wikipdeia claims that the ringing you hear is about 12 kHz, but they need a citation. I tried this myself. It's true the 2008 and the 1982 pennies do not ring, they are zinc. The 1981 and older ones ring. Sadly, I do not know the frequency of the ring.

Also, don't eat the new pennies as they are mostly zinc. Zinc is poisonous in large amounts. Therefore pennies after 1982 are the not safe for you or your pets to eat. If you do that sort of thing...

By the way, if you think I have too much time on my hands let me tell you this: it took me longer to set up the blog than it did to write this.

And so it begins, already at step eight.

This begins just like another of these doubling blogs such as: http://doublingchallenge.blogspot.com/
http://doubleyourwaytoamillion.blogspot.com/
http://dtamp.blogspot.com/
And so on. The above blogs have inspired me to make my own blog of my doubling challenge because it makes it so much easier to keep track of. And if someone wants to read it to also be inspired by this simple .pdf thing they can be.
I started at least a few months ago with a penny and so on, but I only went with spare change I found on the ground. After some time I might actually move on to buying raw materials and making something... Maybe a xbox laptop ... That would be awesome. (My current Xbox is the 203 watt one so I would have to by a new one to avoid heat problems.)

Anyway. Tangents are fun.
So, I currently find myself at $1.69. And I got here rather easily.
Before step five I wasn't keeping track, but here is the challenge so far: (Yes, I bend the rules a bit, but ... I don't mind.)

0000000.01 -- Step 01 - Completed
0000000.02 -- Step 02 - Completed
0000000.04 -- Step 03 - Completed
0000000.08 -- Step 04 - Completed
0000000.16 -- Step 05 - Completed
0000000.32 -- Step 06 - Completed

May 5, 2008 - Found dime behind school. Current stake: $0.43
May 7, 2008 - Found 5 cents because someone decided to throw them down a hallway because he thought they were useless. Then I found $0.46 just around the school. I have never had much success doing this at school until today and it managed to double the amount of money I have already found at school... Strange. Current stake: $0.94

STEP COMPLETE

0000000.64 -- Step 07

May 11, 2008 - Mother's Day. I saw a woman putting two medium sized buckets of coins into a coinstar machine and after she left I looked to see if she dropped any. She did. She dropped a 1963 dime. I know that dimes from before 1964 were made out of silver and right when I picked it up I could tell it was wierd. This coin was in okay condition, it had a scratch on the head but the silver value alone was still twelve times face value. I really hope that this was the only odd coin in her two buckets or else she could have easily dumped hundreds of dollars into a machine that steals nine cents of every dollar you put into it. What an amazing deal for Coinstar. Well, actually Coinstar doesn't look at the coins put into its machines, I doubt they are even looked at by a human from when they enter the machine until after they are sent to the bank. Coinstar most likely sends the coins from their machines directly to the bank after rolling them up. And to get to my point: If you come across a roll of dimes from the bank that are all 1964 and before you know where they came from -- a person who puts a bunch of coins into a coin counting machine without even looking them over. I guess you only have so much time in life, why not do something other than look at shiny coins. The woman could not be found, or I would ask her to show me the rest of the coins that her husband had been collecting (yes, I'm going to treat her like a stereotype)...
Just a short edit below:
Okay, a bit of research shows that a dime is about .0718 of an ounce. Today the price of silver is $17. The dime is then worth about $1.22 in silver value alone. If the charts are right, maybe silver will double again soon...

Since the dime is actually worth more than a dime I'm going to say I'm still at $0.94. With a shiny 1963-D dime in 'fine' condition.


May 12, 2008 - Found $0.75 still in a vending machine's return slot. Woo! (Is it sad that I was happy about this?) Current stake: $1.69
STEP COMPLETE